BITTER WORDS
From the pit of the world--from the Law Courts, hot and crowded, where
the atmosphere was heavy with strife,--the modern battleground, where
the fighting was at least as dramatic over the souls of men as on those
other fields, reddened with their blood, Deane escaped to find himself,
after a few hours' journey, in this strangest of churchyards upon the
bare hillside. The church itself, squat, square-towered, and tumbling
into decay, stood out like a watch-tower upon the cliff. The churchyard,
bordered by low gray stone walls, seemed to contain little more than a
dozen or so of graves, and from one of these Deane turned away, and with
Winifred by his side commenced the long descent to the level of the sea.
The half-a-dozen who had attended the ceremony out of curiosity had
already melted away. The parson, with his book under his arm, had gone
into the vestry, but neither custom nor age had failed to rob those few
sentences of their wonderful, threatening pathos. Even Deane was a
little moved. The girl who walked by his side carried still with her
that impenetrable mask, but there was something more like real sadness
in the steady gaze of her unseeing eyes.
The air was filled with sunshine, the singing of larks, and the calling
of the white-winged seagulls wheeling about their heads. Below, the sea
had receded to its furthest limits. The creeks were dry. The shore was
piled with masses of fragrant seaweed. The grass-grown dykes which led
down to the tower stood high and dry, like ribbons across the land.
Little sandy spits were visible, far out from the shore, and only the
white-topped posts marked the way of the tidal river out beyond the
island of seagulls and sand.
Deane, after his anxious days and his tearing ride from town in the
great motor, felt the peace of all these things, showed it in his face,
felt it in his heart. The last few days had taught him a good deal.
Never had he been so weary of his place in the great world as he was
that afternoon. Even that little ceremony in the wind-swept churchyard,
the coffin lowered into the grave, the heaping of earth, the simple
words spoken by the bareheaded vicar,--even that little ceremony had
left its impression. After all, how small the difference between Death
and Life,--ignominy and greatness! His own reputation had many times
during the last few days trembled in the balance. What was the value of
that, even,--of all his wealth,--compared to the great primeval facts of
life?
His thoughts suddenly turned to the girl by his side. He looked at her
pityingly,--looked at her, too, with curiosity. She had accepted his
coming almost as a matter of course. All the time, though he had known
well that she was suffering, she had been wordless, as though her grief
were something so great that no outward sign of it could be anything
else but pitifully inadequate. In her quiet, graceful walk, the very
reserve, the negativeness, so to speak, of her coloring, her speech, her
looks, she still represented to him an insoluble enigma. Was it
possible, now that her brother had gone, that she would speak? In any
case, the silence between them could not continue much longer, for
already they were down on the marshes, and, as though by common consent,
had turned seaward, towards where the lonely gray tower stood out on its
little sandy eminence.
"Tell me, Miss Rowan," he said, "what are your plans now?"
"My plans?" she repeated, without turning her head.
"Yes!" he went on. "I know that your brother's death is a blow to you,
but remember that it was inevitable. It was a thing which was bound to
come, and in many ways it was kinder and better that it should happen
like this. You could not have chosen for him a more peaceful ending, a
more peaceful resting-place. For anyone with even the faintest beliefs
in the future life could anything be more beautiful than to rest there,
with the eternal lullaby of the sea in his ears, free from encroachment,
save the encroachment of nature herself?"
She turned to look at him, and the calm scrutiny of her level gray eyes
somehow disturbed him. "It is easy for you to talk like that," she said.
"You are still young and strong, and if the pendulum of fate swings
against you one day, it pays you back the next. You are selfish because
you cannot help it. You cannot even realize the hideousness of death!
You cannot realize it because it comes to other people, and not to you!"
"You are a little unfair, Miss Rowan," Deane answered. "You must
remember that your brother was a doomed man."
"Yes, but why?" she cried. "He was younger than you. There were no worse
things in his life. Always he was battling with failure and
disappointment. And this is the end,--to sit opposite a doctor, and be
told you may live a month, three months, a measure of time. Oh! it's
easy to think about it for other people! Think of yourself going about
with the knowledge in your heart that as the days passed one by one they
brought you nearer to the end, that every morning when your eyes opened,
instead of the joy of life would come once more that terrible fear."
"Your brother was not a coward, Miss Rowan," Deane said.
"A coward! You mean that he did not show his sufferings!" she exclaimed.
"That does not mean that he did not suffer. Oh! I have heard him in the
night when he thought that he was alone, I have heard his agony. And
that is the end!"
She turned and faced the little stone church on the hill, the rudely
enclosed churchyard, in the far corner of which was still visible the
bare heap of mould.
"He felt it coming, he felt the strength pass from him day by day,--he,
who had never known what it was to live, who had never known the days of
riches or success or power. There he lies,--God knows for what purpose,
to what end!"
Deane walked for a little way in silence. It seemed to him that the
girl's bitterness was scarcely reasonable. Yet he realized that at such
a time reason loses its power.
"His last days, at least, were as comfortable as possible."
"Comfortable!" she exclaimed scornfully. "He lived in hell!"
"You are not blaming me, by any chance?" Deane asked quietly.
She turned upon him, and the mask seemed suddenly raised. There blazed
into her eyes a great fire. There trembled in the notes of her voice a
wonderful passion. Her form seemed to dilate. They were walking now upon
the top of the dyke, and she seemed to have been suddenly transformed
into something vengeful, some grim representation of Fate.
"Blame you!" she cried. "I tell you that I hate all you smug,
successful, phrase-making men, who succeeded where he failed. What are
you that he was not? He was brave, he worked hard, he was honest,
courageous, he was all that a man should be. If you were ever these
things you at least were not more, and to you comes wealth and easy
days, honor, a long, peaceful future. London--the world--is full of you,
grubbing your way through life, thinking what magnificent creatures you
are, opening your pockets to help with your alms those who have fallen,
those who, if there was justice upon the earth, should be in your
places!"
"This is unreasonable," Deane declared coldly.
"Unreasonable! Who said it was anything else?" she cried. "What reason
is there in life, in death, in success or failure? Can you tell me the
laws by which life is ruled, can you find them anywhere, at the base of
any man's success or another's failure? Reasonable, indeed! One man
swims and another drowns. Who can tell why? One man grows rich, another
starves, and as often as not it is the clever man who starves and the
fool who grows rich. There is no reason in those things. There is no
reason in my hate for you and all those who have lived easy lives, and
who go on living them while he--lies there!"
She turned back once more and pointed with outstretched hand towards the
little church. The wind blew her skirts about her,--disturbed for once
the trim, uncompromising arrangement of her hair. The color had come
into her cheeks at last. Deane wondered why he had never before thought
her beautiful!
"I am sorry you are feeling like this," he said. "I did what I could for
your brother."
"Be silent!" she interrupted fiercely. "You did what you could! To
insure your own safety you sent him on a desperate, unworthy mission--to
worm his way into the confidence of a drunkard, to steal for you, to be
your jackal. What did you care what the consequences might be! What did
you care, so long as your own reputation and wealth were saved! He was
to be one other--my poor Basil--one other of those to be crushed beneath
the great wheels!"
"It is not fair," replied Deane, "to make such statements. Your brother
knew his risks, and he took them."
"Knew his risks!" she repeated. "You mean that because you were on your
feet when he was on the ground, you would make use of him like any other
lump of mud you would spurn with your foot if you had not found a use
for it. He did your bidding, poor fool, but where he failed, I
succeeded. You have to deal with me now, and I think that it is my turn
to make terms!"
Deane looked at her curiously. "At last," he said, "you are going to
admit your possession of that little document?"
"At last," she admitted, "I am going to tell you that I have it!"
"And to name your price?" he asked.
There was a queer little sound in her throat, like an unnatural laugh.
"My price! Yes, that is another matter!"